Madonna in trono

Giotto painted this great altarpiece around 1310 for the church of Ognissanti in Florence, and it hangs today in a room where you can set it beside older Madonnas by his predecessors. That comparison is the whole point. Where painters before him gave the Virgin a flat, gold, weightless throne, Giotto builds a solid Gothic seat that recedes into real space, and he lets her body press down into it with actual weight. Look at her robe. The folds are shaped by light and shadow rather than drawn in gold lines, so the knees push forward as a real form would. The panel stands more than ten feet tall, and the angels crowding at its base kneel and look up, holding vases of lilies and roses.